Trial of Boston bomber should raise interesting questions

The trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should raise some very interesting legal questions.

After being pursued as a terrorist, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will apparently be tried in a civilian court. The defendant went through sixteen hours of interrogation before he was given his Miranda rights. Will the “public safety exception” hold up through an appeal process in a civilian court, or will the case be thrown out? After all, Miranda is not a law in and of itself but a crystallization of the constitutional principle that every accused person has certain rights and should be told those before being interrogated. If the right can be waived for any citizen simply because they are called “terrorist” what does that mean for the Constitution?

Of late, we waive Miranda rights for people accused of being terrorists, but a trial may raise the question why Muslim killers receive that label, but not white Christians like the killers at Columbine and Sandy Hook? Will the principle of “equal treatment before the law” surface in this trial?

Will anyone ask what constitutional sense it makes to interrogate someone as an “enemy combatant” when no war has not been declared?

It would be a terrible thing for a dangerous killer to walk free on technicalities. It is also a terrible thing when core constitutional principles have to be gutted to prevent that from happening.

4 comments

I thought that Miranda was law, then again, I am not surprised that law enforcement does not have to tell
persons their rights since many around the nation are finding law enforcement officers to be ignorant of the Supreme Court ruling that citizens can film officers on duty.

I have friends who work as cops back home and I do not envy the amount of responsibility and risk of their jobs. That said, like every member and veteran of the US military, our law enforcement officers take an oath to the uphold and defend the Constitution.

In my opinion, whether we give up our rights or allow them to be taken away in the name of safety,
we are doing so out of fear– and that means in common talk that the terrorists are winning.

If we ween ourselves beyond spiritual “milk” and examine our spiritual diet as adults, choosing to violate these rights and freedoms for safety is acting out of fear, and not love.

Further, as a human being living in Texas, I find it just as easy to extend my compassion to innocent civilians killed by our bombs in Afghanistan, Iraq or Pakistan as I do the innocent civilians in Boston– and
while I want safety from violence for everyone, I feel more responsible for mitigating and ending the violence of our government than ending the violence of “terrorists.”

What if our nation removed our log to better see the terrorists’ splinter?

Frankly, I think if we simply had a more just, honest foreign policy and dealt with terrorism by crime-fighting rather than war, we could more effectively mitigate terrorism than the use of extra-judicial interrogation of terrorists or terrorist suspects.

And thank you for all you do to make this a more peaceful world. I’m sorry I fell off the planet a while back. I got really sick and only saw your emails after it was too late to help with the letter you wanted me to write.

The reality is that this guy injured 264 people and killed 3 people by the Boston Bombings. He is directly responsible for killing and injuring these people and he has to accept responsibility for his actions.

There is no excuse for what he did. He came to this country and became a citizen of the United States. He made an oath as a citizen to uphold the laws of this country.

He knew exactly what he was doing when he planted those pressure cooker bombs. He knew that these bombs would kill and injure people at the Boston Marathon.

Now he has to face the justice system of this country. He made the choice to betray our country by planting bombs in the name of his so-called religion of Islam. He has to face the consequences of his actions.

I agree that is one reality. Another reality is that horrific acts are often used as an excuse to undo civil liberties. When we allow law officials to deny the accused of an attorney just because they have been accused of a terrible deed, they need only accuse us of a terrible deed for us to lose our protections as well.